Maple Leafs are playing well, getting points

Surely, but strangely the Leafs have picked up points in four straight games after a 4-3 win Wednesday night in Tampa.

Strangely, because the four games have hardly been seamless.

First was Carolina, when the Leafs saw one big lead (3-0) and one late lead (2 seconds left) slip away in a 6-5 shootout loss.

The following Saturday they arguably played their most complete game of the season in a 2-1 shootout defeat of the Washington Capitals.

Follow that up with a 61-shot effort and overtime loss to the Islanders, a game in which they outshot the Isles by forty, and you have a strange collection of points after Wednesday’s tilt.

Twice on Wednesday they squelched leads only to regain them each time.

First a 2-0 lead evaporated in the first after goals from Nikolai Kulemin and Niklas Hagman were matched by Lightning markers from Andrej Meszaros and Vincent Lecavalier. Then a 3-2 lead disintegrated in the second when Ryan Malone tied the game. But the Leafs managed to hang in and Matt Stajan’s sixth of the year on a breakaway late in the second built the lead back to one, a lead they were able to hold onto for good.

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